Shocking evidence has emerged from the Mideast about an escalation in the persecution of Christians in Muslim countries. According to a report in Lebanon Today, at least one man was crucified and two others were otherwise executed by the jihadist group Ansar al-Shariah that had taken control of a region in Yemen and imposed Islamic religious law, known as shariah. The jihadists accused the trio of being agents or spies for the United States and killed them several months ago during a period when the Yemeni government was challenged by riots and rebellion. The MEMRI website has photographs of the jihadists’ victims.

A caption to a video of a victim of crucifixion explained that he was an accused “spy who was executed by extremists for placing sensors in militant’s cars to direct U.S. attacks on them.”

A report issued to subscribers only by the MEMRI website showed a photograph of the victim crucified on an electric pylon in south Yemen’s Abyan province. Translated, a sign affixed above the victim’s head displayed the flag of the Al-Qaeda-linked group and a text from verse 5:33 of the Koran: “The recompense of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger and do mischief in the land is only that they shall be killed or crucified or their hands and their feet be cut off from opposite sides, or be exiled from the land. That is their disgrace in this world, and a great torment is theirs in the Hereafter.”

Walid Shoebat, a former PLO operative who is now a terrorism analyst, said that the inscription in one of the photos reads, “He was crucified for three days in accordance with shariah.” According to Shoebat, the group carried out the Shariah-prescribed penalties as retribution for allegedly giving information to U.S. forces which then carried out drone strikes against terrorist in Yemen.

According to a translation by Shoebat, a report on the crucifixions said, “One they nicknamed ‘Captain’ was executed by crucifixion for three days at the entrance to the city of Jaar in the Abyan province, to be viewed by passersby entering and leaving the city.” Shoebat provided a translation of other summary executions carried out by the jihadists, “Two Saudis and a Yemeni were also executed by the sword at dawn at the hands of Ansar al-Shariah, and [the terrorists] absolved [a] fourth defendant from execution for his young age.”